$20 tub spout turned into a 6-hour nightmare

Picked up a cheap replacement spout at Lowe's for a rental in Denver. Thought it would be a 20-minute swap, but the old one was seized on so bad I ended up cutting it off with a hacksaw. Then the new one's threads didn't match the pipe, so I had to make two more trips for adapter fittings. Anyone else waste a whole day on a job that should take 10 minutes?

2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

2 Comments

charlienelson3mo ago

Man I gotta push back a little on this one. The cheap spout from Lowe's is almost always a crapshoot with threads, especially on older rental plumbing. If you had just spent 5 minutes measuring the pipe thread OD and pitch before cutting anything, you could have grabbed the right adapter on the first trip. I've done similar swaps in my own house and the key is to just accept that 30 year old plumbing is never gonna be a drop in replacement.

5

loganl223mo ago

The worst plumbing story I've got is from a buddy who tried to replace a kitchen faucet and ended up with water spraying all over his basement because he didn't check the threads first. He just eyeballed it at the store and grabbed the first brass piece that looked close enough. Measuring that thread pitch feels like a pain in the moment but it saves you from making three trips back to Lowe's and a whole lot of cussing under the sink.

4